A couple of bishops are leading a...

A couple of bishops are leading a contingent of more than 40 Roman Catholic priests, nuns, brothers and seminarians scheduled to run in Sunday’s Los Angeles Marathon.

The purpose is to promote a better image of “healthy, wholesome and alive people in ministry,” said Sister Kathy Bryant, director of sisters’ vocations for the Los Angeles archdiocese.

But some may look healthier and more alive than others near the end of the grueling run.

Auxiliary Bishop Carl A. Fisher, 42, has been in “serious training for several months,” according to an archdiocesan press spokesman. Fisher, who lives in Lakewood and has charge of the San Pedro region, has never competed in a marathon but has run several shorter races.

Another auxiliary bishop, Patrick Ziemann of Santa Barbara, likes to run regularly, according to an assistant, but Ziemann was not mentioned in an archdiocesan press release as a prospect to finish the race.

More promising are Father George Aguilera, 42, associate pastor of St. John Vianney parish in Hacienda Heights, and Dominican Sister Mary Sean, 48, an elementary school principal in East Los Angeles. Both have completed four marathons. Aguilera said he hopes to better his fastest time to date--2 hours, 58 minutes in the San Pedro Marathon.

PEOPLE

Although Catholic Archbishop Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles showed off his donated $400,000 helicopter this week, he will not be using it much until fall. Mahony said he wants 250 hours flight time experience with the jet-powered helicopter; he has only eight or nine hours with this craft and about 150 hours on piston-driven copters. A “hobby” with Mahony ever since he was introduced to helicopter flying in the late 1970s, it became a “pastoral tool” with the donation. It will allow Mahony, 53, to make quicker and more frequent trips to church facilities in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties and to church business as far away as the San Joaquin Valley, Arizona and Tijuana. Now called “Falcon 500,” Mahony has not said what he wants to dub it. It is called “Halo One” by at least one employee of HeliNet Aviation Services, which will house it at Van Nuys Airport and rent it out when not needed by Mahony.

DATES

Two Soviet Baptist church leaders will speak at the Fuller Theological Seminary chapel service 10 a.m. Tuesday at Pasadena Presbyterian Church. The visit of The Revs. Alexei Bichkov, general secretary of the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptists, and Mikhail Zhidkov, pastor of a Baptist church in Moscow, follows a similar visit last year to the Soviet Union by Fuller President David A. Hubbard and seminary trustees.

Coretta Scott King of Atlanta, widow of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., will speak on the status of black-Jewish relations in three repeated lectures over the next three days in the Los Angeles area. Sponsored by the University of Judaism, the lectures will have different repondents at each site. A university spokeswoman said the initial lecture Sunday at Valley Beth Shalom in Encino is sold out, but that tickets were available for the 8 p.m. talks Monday at Sinai Temple in Westwood and Tuesday at Congregation Ner Tamid of South Bay in Rancho Palos Verdes.

CONFERENCE

The California division of the Assn. of Orthodox Jewish Scientists will begin a one-day conference on “Creation and the Nature of Life” at 8:45 a.m. Sunday at the UCLA Faculty Center. The state branch defines its educational aim as promoting a “synthesis of Jewish and secular values and ideas in areas confronting the observant Jew living in a scientifically attuned society.”